Over the past few weeks I have been volunteering at Willow Elementary School in Lansing with 1st graders. While I am in the classroom, I help the teacher with different activities like making booklets and working one-on-one with students. There are some days where the teacher will have me help her with stuff she wasn't able to get to like putting together packets, but I usually help with a group of students or a few individual kids. I also go to lunch and recess sometimes with the children. During lunch I help open up milk cartons and other food they struggle to open, and then I help when it's time to clean up and throw everything into the trash. While at recess I help watch all the children with a few other teachers and volunteer students. On my first day in the classroom, I got to see what the children do on a daily basis. They start their day out in a group in the middle of the classroom where they sing, count, and talk about the weather outside. "The student of the day " gets to stand up in front of everyone with the teacher and help them figure out the date, count the numbers in the date, look outside and decide what the weather is, and then help the teacher spell their name and sign it out loud with everyone. After watching them sing and dance, I put together the book "What Do You See Brown Bear? " so each child could have their own to look at and color in. I knew making these books really helped the teacher because she has a lot to do since the teachers at Willow teach every subject to their students. After making the books I got to work with a group of students at their desks. Each set of desks has 4 kids and each desk gets a different activity. We do activities like coloring in by the number and writing out words relating to the topic in the classroom. After working with a group of students, all the kids went back to the group area and I got to work one-on-one with one of the children.
